(12-14-2024, 11:35 PM)Lucky2Last Wrote:

(12-14-2024, 11:22 PM)flsprtsgod Wrote: Man, y'all letting Doofy act like his posting is legitimate? Just laugh at him like Mikesez and move on. Otherwise he'll keep pretending his posts have meaning.

I'll give him one more shot. If he doesn't address my points, I'll move on. I have better things to do than feed trolls.

I'll start with the premise that left/right is not an accurate paradigm to adequately measure anything but preservation of tradition, and it's widely misused by political novices and rhetoricians. It's an arbitrary measure based on the political leanings of the French during their revolution. In its purest sense, the right has come to be associated with tradition and the left change. However, the left-right paradigm loses almost all of its value when you start trying to clump multiple ideals into a simple, horizontal axis. It's just absurd to do such a thing. We don't measure anything else this way. To suggest that the American right favors tyranny is about an absurd an idea as one could have.

The left-right paradigm is only useful when it's defined in a clear way, and in the context of the traditions a group is trying to preserve. In this regard ONLY, I agree the NAZIs were right wing. That doesn't make them comparable to the American right, because they are attempting to hold onto different values. For every similarity between the American right and the German right you list, I can find differences. It's a fool's errand to try to link entire groups to other groups because it lacks nuance and understanding. 

TDS, you and your ilk are so inconsistent in your values. If I tried to say how American blacks are just like American whites (of which there are far more similarities than dissimilarities), you would yammer on about the importance of identity and multiculturalism. Yet, when it's convenient, you disparage entire clusters of people if you think it gives you a political advantage. It's gross. And if you really believed what you preached, you would be so quick to swallow that bukkake.

I don't know why you believe my characterization of pre-WWII Germany is inaccurate (since your replay was read a book), but it's pretty spot on, if not oversimplified. I have been one of the most conciliatory posters on this board when it comes to acknowledging the similarities between Germany and the US, especially as it pertains to cultural resistance to leftist ideas. I think the conditions do favor an authoritarian offering to abuse the powers of the state on behalf of the people. That's what Hitler did. That said, you either aren't honest enough or bright enough to see what's causing this, which is too much change being ushered in by the radicals on the left.

I think this is a good post, and you had me until the last sentence. This is not a recent problem and it's not entirely a left problem either.

I think there are different arenas in society: there is business, there is culture, there is family, and there is politics. Business, culture, and family are always naturally changing, and politics has to naturally change to keep up with them. So the right-left dichotomy is more correctly understood as "as little change as possible, favor tradition" vs "as much change as possible".

The left, starting around 2015, is clearly pushing through radical changes with transgenderism, but thats mainly in culture and family, much less political. It took them about 25 years to get us to accept gay marriage, and after that victory they wanted us to accept transgenderism right away. That's a big change, but it's not the big change.

We've been ripe for an authoritatarian much longer than you think.  The basic problem is not enough change is occurring in the political arena while change continues apace in the other arenas. We try to regulate immigration with laws that haven't been updated since 1987. We try to regulate internet service and social media providers with laws that haven't been updated since 1994. Business and labor regulations are still being used at trials today, that date back over a hundred years with no update.  

All of this dates back to the 90s. Parties always try to draw lessons from their losses.  The lesson the Republicans drew from losing the 1996 election was that they shouldn't have passed anything Clinton would sign while they had control of Congress.  Letting him sign off on their work made him look pragmatic and capable.  It took Democrats about 10 years to learn the same lesson, but they've learned it. So a party in Congress doesn't see it as advantageous to pass anything, unless they also control the White House, and even then, the other party will be so hostile that they will need their party to be nearly unanimous to get it done. Of course no one talks this way in the Capitol building, they always have slimy excuses for why their votes have changed and why they no longer want to work on an issue that they were so passionate about 2 years ago. Even 2 weeks ago. But the people see through this and have lost all faith in Congress, it is by far the least popular of the three branches.

So with the legislative branch barely functioning at all, the people naturally look to the judicial and executive branches to become more authoritarian, because at least something's getting done that way.

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